How much might the Phoenix Suns miss Chris Paul's sure-handed play while he's sidelined by an avulsion fracture to his right thumb?
When CP3 arrived in the Valley of the Sun last season, one of the most predictable improvements was to Phoenix's turnover rate. Near league average in that category in 2019-20, the Suns jumped into the league's top five en route to the NBA Finals last season.
Through the All-Star break, Phoenix was turning the ball over on 11.4% of its possessions with Paul on the court according to NBA Advanced Stats. With him on the bench, that jumps to 15.7%. With that in mind, this week's mailbag digs into whether Paul has done more to prevent turnovers than any other NBA player historically.
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag, or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
This week's mailbag also answers questions on the remaining buyout candidates on the market and what kind of players might be added to the list when the NBA picks a 100th anniversary team in 25 years.
"Last year the Suns made history for how well they took care of the ball. Is there a player in history that drove turnovers down more than Paul?"
First, it's worth noting that for our purposes NBA "history" starts in 1973-74, the first year the league tracked turnovers at the team level. It's possible Bob Cousy or Oscar Robertson was actually the best at this and we'd never know.
Since then, I attempted to answer the question by looking at team turnover rate relative to league average that season for all games in a player's career. That required a bit of a patchwork approach: season-long adjusted team turnover rate through 1984-85, estimated team turnover rate by game through 1995-96 and turnover rate by game since 1996-97 using actual possessions in the play-by-play era.
Among players with at least 1,000 career games, here are the leaders: